|
Timotheous Venture posted:This is how you can identify people who's parents didn't love them enough to give them Lego sets as a child. 
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 15:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 03:15 |
|
|
If all instructions had the beauty and clarity of Lego instructions, the world would be a better place.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 15:25
|
|
|
Lego instructions are so much better than they were twenty or thirty years ago. It used to be that there was no per-step piece inventory. The kid had to really scrutinise the current and previous step to be sure they weren’t supposed to snap on another plate. The steps were much larger, too. LEGO might have gone a little too far in breaking things into many smaller steps.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 15:35
|
|
|
Technic always had per-step part lists
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 15:59
|
|
|
Jerry Cotton posted:Seriouspost: Computer software and especially documentation is utter poo poo compared to what it was when they learned to use computers (assuming they did). I'm talking about the people who will call me up saying their computer is broken, then I remote in and literally read the dialog box on the screen to them verbatim and they then act like there was no way for anyone but an IT professional to know that the dialog box saying that the printer was out of paper meant that they should put paper in the printer rather than just clicking the print button another 14 times. Or the people who are entirely lost if the user interface changes even in an insignificant way. Not just inconvenienced by having to locate the things that moved and adjust habits, acting like the thing they're looking for has entirely disappeared even though it's still in the same general ballpark location on the screen. I did a monitor upgrade for a customer once, going from 17" 1280x1024 to 24" 1080p. As a result the machines that were running at the time reset their desktop icons and the extra width meant that their main LOB app's toolbar became one wide row rather than two narrower ones. Everything was still in the same general ballpark location compared to where it was before, but multiple people there acted like everything was broken because they never even bothered to look. It wasn't exactly where it was before, so there's no possible way for them to proceed.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 16:00
|
|
|
Things should stay where they are.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 16:34
|
|
|
Jerry Cotton posted:Things should stay where they are. That's what the 400-lb block of concrete is for.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 16:49
|
|
|
Everyone not in Hubei province posted:Things should stay where they are.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 16:51
|
|
|
Renaissance Robot posted:Why We've found a lot of things in this house that were done by "handy" people. Pray for the dried out little gasket thing in the trap I dutifully screwed back in yesterday.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 19:00
|
|
|
wolrah posted:Not denying this statement at all, but that's not what I'm talking about. I just tell people like that community colleges have computer literacy classes. I can't anymore. It just enables them, when I "fix" the problem. Seriously. If "I showed you this last week" doesn't trigger their shame drive to learn about any of it, they are just offloading their work onto me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 19:18
|
|
|
Wasabi the J posted:I just tell people like that community colleges have computer literacy classes. I think you may be misinterpreting some of it. I've had contracts with large companies and municipalities in the past and a large percentage of "it's broken" calls were opportunistic excuses to spend the next several hours in the break room "because I can't do anything until this is fixed."
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 19:49
|
|
|
Yeah well gently caress those guys. I want to slack off too, not help them find their old shortcuts because they're too loving precious to hit WinKey and type the thing they're looking for.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
Megillah Gorilla posted:If all instructions had the beauty and clarity of Lego instructions, the world would be a better place. My kids call them "constructions" 
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 20:50
|
|
|
H110Hawk posted:We've found a lot of things in this house that were done by "handy" people. Pray for the dried out little gasket thing in the trap I dutifully screwed back in yesterday. My current rental was previously inhabited by such a person. I'd get into it but it's all very pedestrian by this thread's standards: pencil marks on all the walls denoting drill points for unfinished jobs, hacked up electrics, random screw plugs peppering all the brickwork, multiple ethernet ports that don't work, power sockets hanging out of walls, self-assembled furniture that exists at a permanent slant, etc
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 21:53
|
|
|
Hi, technical writer here, AMA about software documentation. It's not really worse than it used to be, I think it's more that software is vastly more confusing and on a much faster release pace than it used to be. And we all use dozens or hundreds of apps now, where people used to use somewhere around three or four. Also people don't buy one product over another purely because the one product has better docs, and some companies would rather spend big on funding their technical support than much smaller amounts funding technical publications. But despite that, there's great software technical docs. People just don't use them. And we know why. A single error in a single tech doc puts people off tech docs for life. People condemn a huge company's entire library of documentation, because one time they were following steps in a procedure and a step was missing and therefore "so-and-so's documentation sucks". Even better: you can actually search for docs online. Used to be you had to have a book, or go buy one; and even once you had a tome in your hand, could you find the part that you needed? Did you get an upgrade and now your book is obsolete? The sheer waste in printing physical manuals for software that got merely annual updates was enormous and insane. Nowadays even if the company that made your software didn't bother to put up a PDF with up to date instructions, you can just about guarantee someone else has had the same problem as you, and has written how to solve it, somewhere accessible. It's the same deal with stuff like assembly instructions, or the user manual for a power tool or your refrigerator or whatever. People don't want to read them, because one time they tried that and got confused or they found one error; or they just don't have the patience any more to read 30 pages before they try to use their cordless drill; or they bought the drill that was $5 cheaper without regard to whether the no-name imported from china drill might have well-translated instructions vs. the $5 more expensive drill also imported from china. (LOL it won't, because that ship has already sailed, it would take millions of people doing that before businesses could justify spending on good docs.) I also wanna mention the thing about user interface changes. People of a certain age or older, grew up with UIs that simply did not and could not change. The radio in the car didn't move one day, the TV remote had 9 buttons and a dial and that was the same for 30 years, the phone was just a phone. They didn't learn by scanning a UI looking for familiar elements that might be out of place: they learned that the knob was right there, and that was reliable. I'd be willing to bet there's literally neurological differences between people whose early childhood experience was using electronic devices with updatable UIs vs. people who never had that. The anxiety and stress from a UI that can just change without notice is more than just insecurity or laziness, it's a difference in cognitive function. Pointing out that the instructions were on the screen, or that the button only moved over a little, isn't changing the fundamental lack of a mental schema for user interfaces that is prepared for them to shift and has completely internalized adaptive behaviors to accommodate that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 22:35
|
|
|
H110Hawk posted:We've found a lot of things in this house that were done by "handy" people. Pray for the dried out little gasket thing in the trap I dutifully screwed back in yesterday. Same. I've been renoing a house for a few months and it's just been a constant stream of dumb little fuckups and 'fixes' from some lovely handyman/contractor of yore. The last one was going to replace the rotted wiring on a hall light only to discover they ran the wire through the attic fan.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 22:47
|
|
|
Wasabi the J posted:I just tell people like that community colleges have computer literacy classes. Computer literacy classes tend to be dogshit. If you look at most 'How To Use Office' classes, you'll see they are about rote memorization. Click on this symbol to at this location to do X. So when Microsoft tweaks the UI it breaks people's memorization. And the classes that do tend to offer why tend to be super basic. This is a keyboard. You type on it. It's layout comes from layouts used for typewriters. Semester is over now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 23:01
|
|
|
there wolf posted:Same. I've been renoing a house for a few months and it's just been a constant stream of dumb little fuckups and 'fixes' from some lovely handyman/contractor of yore. The last one was going to replace the rotted wiring on a hall light only to discover they ran the wire through the attic fan. Previous owner of my house cut the grounds off every single light fixture they installed. I guess it was too much work to actually connect that one extra wire.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 23:28
|
|
|
Thomamelas posted:Computer literacy classes tend to be dogshit. If you look at most 'How To Use Office' classes, you'll see they are about rote memorization. Click on this symbol to at this location to do X. So when Microsoft tweaks the UI it breaks people's memorization. And the classes that do tend to offer why tend to be super basic. This is a keyboard. You type on it. It's layout comes from layouts used for typewriters. Semester is over now. Yeah there's that, too. People need to be taught the general schemas of design used by software companies: stuff like, here's 20 different app UIs, note these specific similarities and differences. Let's have a class discussion about complexity vs. simplicity and how that relates to flexibility vs. inflexibility. Next week we'll review different approaches to online help. That'd actually help develop computer skills, as opposed to just walking someone through a fixed set of procedures on one version of one application. But it'd also take a lot more effort to develop that curriculum.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2020 23:43
|
|
|
Obsoletely Fabulous posted:Previous owner of my house cut the grounds off every single light fixture they installed. I guess it was too much work to actually connect that one extra wire. I just switched out a fixture tonight. We had fun: - No junction box - Cloth wires - no grounds I improved one of these things...
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 01:08
|
|
|
The Dave posted:I just switched out a fixture tonight. We had fun: Av/post combo 
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 01:58
|
|
|
Stratton Colorado, East part of the state drat near to Kansas, Gonna bet a tornado kablooied the original house and they just put a roof on what was left. Or, this is a tornado proof house. There's an A frame house right behind that is oddly low to the ground. Corner of Main and Wyoming
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 03:10
|
|
|
Maybe it's the hobbit in me, but I really like the idea of a bellow ground home. Of course you'd have to have multiple means of egress and some way to prevent flooding. A few skylights wouldn't hurt either.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 04:40
|
|
|
deoju posted:Maybe it's the hobbit in me, but I really like the idea of a bellow ground home. All the air moving in and out would be a pain too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 05:03
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:someone else has had the same problem as you, and has written how to solve it, somewhere accessible. In my experience, they had the problem, posted about it on a message board, and then 2 days later they responded to their own post with "Solved it!" and no other information.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 05:14
|
|
|
I haven't built ikea in a while, but I once built one of their Billy bookcases, followed the instructions carefully, and still wound up putting every shelf and the laminate backing in backwards.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 11:20
|
|
|
StormDrain posted:All the air moving in and out would be a pain too. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 11:33
|
|
|
I reread it when I saw this and I think back in the day I'd be all about an underground house but at some point in the last decade I stopped my basement dwelling tendencies and now I want as much natural light as is reasonably possible and I hate curtains and window shades being closed. I live out in the country with no neighbors to really see in, fortunately, or else I'd probably get calls.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 13:16
|
|
|
shortspecialbus posted:I reread it when I saw this and I have huge windows. The best windows I tell you. So 6 months of the year I keep the curtains drawn 24/7 to keep the heat from going out, and the other six I keep the curtains drawn all day so the heat doesn't come in. Many such cases.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 13:30
|
|
|
shortspecialbus posted:I reread it when I saw this and I've been stewing over building an earthen home for my next house, and have been considering an earth-berm/hobbit hole one. You don't have to go that deep to tap into the consistent temperature of the earth which offsets heating and cooling needs a lot, but it does mean less light and moisture issues.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 14:52
|
|
|
Blue Footed Booby posted:Some of their products have iffy QA, so there might be a screw head that won't sit flat and blocks a drawer, or things might be misaligned just enough to be wobbly. I know people who ran into problems like that and blamed their assembly. IKEA has a lot of problems with their fabrication process. The last thing I bought from them required significant re-fabrication. Fortunately I have the tools and could chase the threads and re-make the fasteners. Some inserts had to be re-made from scratch. It seems like their stuff was pretty good 20 years ago. Now that they're ubiquitous, they've kind of given up. Their instructions are wrong sometimes. I'm old enough now that I'd rather buy my stuff already built. I don't feel like spending two hours putting a chair together anymore.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 15:13
|
|
|
Ikea's nicer crap is fine for low quality furniture. If you go up from the absolute cheapest stuff it will wind up being functional but don't abuse it. I got to a point a few years ago where I didn't strictly need the instructions for hemnes dressers/nightstands. We also bought a massive PAX wardrobe thing. It all works, but some of the parts are stupidly hard to install. The piece I nearly gave up on was the soft close for the pax which they have you install blind with no pilot hole. As with all home projects, youtube helps. We got stuck at one point thinking surely this isn't that dumb and turns out it was. Soft closes and the glass panes for the pax doors were the things I watched videos on. Don't buy their kitchens though, they're too high duty cycle for the quality.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 15:39
|
|
|
there wolf posted:I've been stewing over building an earthen home for my next house, and have been considering an earth-berm/hobbit hole one. You don't have to go that deep to tap into the consistent temperature of the earth which offsets heating and cooling needs a lot, but it does mean less light and moisture issues. Can't you drill a dry well and use that to do heat exchange with the earth? It lets you moderate your interior temperature using just a fan. I swear I remember seeing that as a building technique somewhere.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 15:54
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:Can't you drill a dry well and use that to do heat exchange with the earth? It lets you moderate your interior temperature using just a fan. I swear I remember seeing that as a building technique somewhere. Geothermal heat pumps are great if you have the soil for it and are building from scratch. Also expensive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 16:02
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:Can't you drill a dry well and use that to do heat exchange with the earth? It lets you moderate your interior temperature using just a fan. I swear I remember seeing that as a building technique somewhere. Some of the Earthships do that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-coupled_heat_exchanger
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 16:10
|
|
|
H110Hawk posted:Geothermal heat pumps are great if you have the soil for it and are building from scratch. Also expensive. They seem fairly common around here. But of course get someone qualified to do the drilling, so they don't accidentally hit the local aquifer, create a torrent of water that damages the whole street, and have to flee the country. (As was posted somewhere up thread.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 16:58
|
|
|
H110Hawk posted:Ikea's nicer crap is fine for low quality furniture. If you go up from the absolute cheapest stuff it will wind up being functional but don't abuse it. I got to a point a few years ago where I didn't strictly need the instructions for hemnes dressers/nightstands. We also bought a massive PAX wardrobe thing. It all works, but some of the parts are stupidly hard to install. The piece I nearly gave up on was the soft close for the pax which they have you install blind with no pilot hole. A good chunk of our furniture is IKEA because we have a 2 year old and we like the way a lot of it looks. The stuff that isn’t IKEA is second hand. We didn’t see the point in buying good furniture that may get destroyed by the little tornado of destruction. Once she is older we will buy decent stuff.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 17:00
|
|
|
Lead out in cuffs posted:They seem fairly common around here. Thats only if its an artesian aquifer. And it would need to flow like a motherfucker. Not all do. Underground house near where I grew up: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0342796,-79.1026385,3a,69.3y,122.27h,87.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smXDDiB9D-nw7HI7AAiEcpw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 17:25
|
|
|
There’s a dope underground house in Las Vegas.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 17:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 03:15 |
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:Can't you drill a dry well and use that to do heat exchange with the earth? It lets you moderate your interior temperature using just a fan. I swear I remember seeing that as a building technique somewhere. A geothermal pump as others have said. You can also do them as fields instead of wells since you only need to go like 6ft deep to get the effect, and circumstances might make it easier to dig a wide but shallow hole rather than a narrow deep one. H110Hawk posted:Geothermal heat pumps are great if you have the soil for it and are building from scratch. Also expensive. The other idea is wattle and daub/cob over a stone foundation with a slate roof. It's not going to be cheap. I live in a fairly temperate climate so the goal is something that needs little to no heating or AC to be comfortable.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2020 18:11
|
|